Free Republic

The chickens have come home to roost for Donald Trump in Pennsylvania. After he stuck his nose in the state’s Republican primary process last May against the guidance of his most loyal advisers, many of his once-devoted followers say they are done with the former president. (snip) “If you’re a Republican in Pennsylvania and you look at Donald Trump’s bigfooting of the people in Pennsylvania and the implosion of his candidates in Pennsylvania, you’re pretty upset,” said Urban, a Washington-based strategist who grew up in Beaver County, Pa. Urban said his phone has been ringing all week with county chairs...

Covid-19 vaccinations could save thousands of lives and billions of dollars this winter. A new analysis suggests that if more people in the United States get their booster by the end of the year, about 90,000 Covid-19 deaths could be prevented this fall and winter. But if booster vaccinations continue at their current pace, the nation could see a peak of more than 1,000 Covid-19 deaths per day this winter, according to the study, published Wednesday by The Commonwealth Fund. There are now more than 400 daily Covid-19 deaths, on average, in the United States. “When you look at the...

CDC has partnered with the American Public Health Association (APHA) to create the Climate Change and Health Playbook: Adaptation Planning for Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. This comprehensive, step-by-step resource is designed to supplement the Building Resilience Against Climate Effects (BRACE) framework and support public health departments and adaptation planners as they blend JEDI into their climate and health efforts. People throughout the United States face climate change-related health risks, but some of us will feel the effects earlier and more severely. This is because of differences in our exposures to climate hazards, our sensitivity to these hazards, and our...

If you want to see my husband get pissed, call the United States, "our democracy." I dare you! "We are a Constitutional Republic," he'll growl with a glare and he's right. Or rather, we were. We got lost for awhile in a morass of incorporation, debt, wars and subtle changes in legal terminology. Now, thanks to President Trump, we are* a Constitutional Republic again. And this is the crux of why President Trump will serve as our President for the next four years. You see, the old incorporated UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (all caps) was dissolved months ago*. The Election...

No one’s expecting Donald Trump’s Thursday rally in Minneapolis to go seamlessly. Some 20,000 mostly out-of-towners will descend on the Target Center. An even larger crowd of locals will be frothing outside. It's a recipe that makes collisions inevitable. So Republicans will be escorted to and from their cars. That duty will fall to Oath Keepers, a “patriot” group whose members fancy themselves as “guardians of the republic.” Or as the Southern Poverty Law Center calls them, “one of the largest radical anti-government groups in the U.S. today.” They are not the kind of people you want entering your city....

since 2014, which is likely good news for Democratic Senate hopeful Beto O’Rourke. With just one week until the midterm elections, polls indicate that the El Paso congressman and Texas senatorial candidate has a 5-point gap to bridge in order to catch his competitor, incumbent Senator Ted Cruz. But O’Rourke has long insisted that a large chunk of his supporters, Texans under 30 and Hispanic voters, don’t show up in those polling numbers. New data from Target Smart, a political data firm, would appear to back his claims. In a recent interview, O’Rourke told CBS News that a large turnout...

The Temple Institute announced the birth of an entirely red female calf that “brings the promise of reinstating Biblical purity to the world”. Red heifers feature in end times tales in both Christianity and Judaism. The cow’s birth and sacrifice is said to proceed the construction of the Third Temple in Jerusalem. And the Third Temple’s construction – following the destruction of the previous two – heralds the arrival of the Jewish Messiah. While some Evangelical Christian theologians have linked the building of the Third Temple to Judgement Day. Rabbi Chain Richman, director of the Temple Institute, hailed the red...

Sen. Ted Cruz dropped out of the presidential race on Tuesday, making it almost certain that Donald Trump will win the GOP nomination and face Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders in November. For those who've been in denial that this day could ever come, we figured a refresher course on the real estate developer's musings about climate and energy might be in order. On the basic science: "I am not a great believer in man-made climate change," Trump told the Washington Post editorial board in March. "If you look, they had global cooling in the 1920s and now they have...

Obama: In Some Neighborhoods It’s Cheaper and Easier For Kids To Get a Gun Than a Book Jenna Lifhits BY: Follow @jlifhits January 7, 2016 8:44 pm In a CNN town tall special on Thursday, President Obama said that there are some neighborhoods in America where it is easier and cheaper for kids to purchase guns than books. “Part of the reason, I think, that this ends up being such a difficult issue, is because people occupy different realities,” he said. “There are a whole bunch of law-abiding citizens who have grown up hunting with their dad or going to...

Rachel Maddow talks to Michael Leiter, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, about how jihadist violence dominates the media in a way that home-grown, right-wing terror does not.

Five years ago, a man married for 25 years who had six kids went to the hospital with a kidney stone and left with a piece of life-changing news — he was a woman. Now, Stevie Crecelius — formerly Steve — is sharing her story. Steve was happily married to his wife and working as a photographer in Denver, Colo., when he learned he was intersex, born with both male and female anatomy....

Unlike Mitt Romney, who occasionally beats President Obama in general election poll match ups, Newt Gingrich trails far behind President Obama in every survey. But just how bad are Gingrich's unfavorable among the general public compared to Obama and Romney? Not every poll releases their full results, so here are the most recent favorability results I could find for Obama, Romney, and Newt. Fox News, 1/12-1/14: Obama, fav/unfav, 51%/46%, +5 Romney, fav/unfav, 45%/38%, +7 Gingrich, fav/unfav, 27%/56%, -29 CBS/NYT, 1/12-1/17: Obama, fav/unfav, 38%/45%, -7 Romney, fav/unfav, 21%/35%, -14 Gingrich, fav/unfav, 17%/49%, -32 PPP, 1/13-1/17: Obama, app/dis, 47%/50%, -3 Romney, fav/unfav,...

The Comedy Central show's faux-news correspondent John Oliver also likens the GOP contender to the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Newt Gingrich's messy personal life is providing comic fuel for The Daily Show. During Thursday's episode on Comedy Central, Jon Stewart and correspondent Jon Oliver took aim at Gingrich's marital history -- now back in the news in a big way following Nightline's controversial interview with Marianne Gingrich -- noting the resemblance between the so-called "Freaker of the House" and Dwight Schrute, the eccentric salesman portrayed by Rainn Wilson on NBC's The Office. Another Gingrich lookalike, according to The Daily Show:...

An Austin Ron Paul supporter has taken out a full-page ad in the local alt weekly newspaper seeking any "stripper ... escort ... or 'young hottie'" who has slept with Rick Perry, part of his single-minded jihad against the presidential candidate. Robert Morrow describes himself as a "self-employed investor and political activist" as well as a three-time delegate to the Texas state GOP convention. "Have you ever had sex with Rick Perry?" blares the ad, placed by Morrow in this week's Austin Chronicle. "Are you a stripper, an escort, or just a 'young hottie' impressed by an arrogant, entitled governor...

Pulitzer Prize winning tax reporter, David Cay Johnston, has written a brilliant piece for tax.com exposing the truth about who really pays for the pension and benefits for public employees in Wisconsin. Gov. Scott Walker says he wants state workers covered by collective bargaining agreements to “contribute more” to their pension and health insurance plans. Accepting Gov. Walker’ s assertions as fact, and failing to check, creates the impression that somehow the workers are getting something extra, a gift from taxpayers. They are not. Out of every dollar that funds Wisconsin’ s pension and health insurance plans for state workers,...

Obama spokesman Bill Burton just put out the traditional pre-debate memo touting McCain's strengths and downplaying expectations for his own candidate -- and openly mocked McCain's performance this week. The memo is the most direct questioning yet from Obama's campaign of McCain's temperament, and his fitness to lead. Burton writes: On the economy, McCain’s words and actions over the course of the past week have illuminated his lack of expertise. He admitted he does not understand the economy -- his erratic, out-of-touch behavior this week, his failure to do anything of substance to move the agreement forward on the bailout,...

Several hundred years ago, the coral reefs of the Caribbean had up to six times more fish than they have today, according to a study published Wednesday. The estimate is made by US scientists poring over the fate of the Caribbean monk seal, a fish-loving mammal driven to extinction in 1952. Historical records from the 17th and 18th century show there were huge numbers of monk seals, distributed among 13 colonies across the Caribbean. They were so plentiful that some ships' maps of the West Indies even noted particularly dense locations of seals. Alas for Monachus tropicalis, colonisation of the...

The numbers tell the story. Time magazine wanted to talk theology with Mel Gibson recently on the set of The Passion, his new movie depicting the last hours of Christ. Asked what he thought about the effects of the Second Vatican Council on the Catholic Church, the Braveheart of Catholic traditionalists said, "Look at the main fruits: dwindling numbers and pedophilia." Gibson's post Vatican II ergo propter Vatican II argument would be enough to drive any high school logic teacher crazy. Is the Council responsible for all the Church's ills, including the priestly sex-abuse crisis, that have arisen since the...

WHEN GEORGE Washington took command of the Continental Army in June of 1775, he wrote to his wife that he expected to be home by fall. He returned eight years later. Union and Confederate soldiers rushing off to fight the Civil War feared they wouldn’t reach the battlefields before the war was over. Americans have a habit of underestimating the length and horror of war. The difference between now and then is that Americans no longer are a patient people. The war is different, too, but that does not mean it is incapable of being won. As the Iraq war...

LONDON -- Westminster Abbey has implicitly criticized churches that opened their doors to the filming of "The Da Vinci Code" last year by denouncing the thriller as "nonsense" that should be exposed by Christians. The abbey barred the filmmakers from its premises in June, saying that the best-selling Dan Brown novel on which the film was based was "theologically unsound." But Lincoln and Winchester cathedrals cooperated with the Hollywood adaptation, as did Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland. The film -- starring Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou and Sir Ian McKellen -- is expected to be one of the blockbusters of the year...